I'm pretty neutral about this book--it's an interesting retelling of and sequel to the classic fairy tale, but as modern touches seep through over the course of the story, it gives it a magical surrealism feel. It is not about the classic fairytale per se, so much as the fairytale is in the narrator's mind as a coping mechanism for a wife who's stressed due to a failing marriage. (To give any more details would be really giving things away.) You don't really suspect it till halfway to 2/3 in. There's pretty much a summation in the end, if you're confused by the novel's plotline. Try this if you're curious, but it didn't knock my socks off.

This is one of the oddest yet most compelling books I’ve read this year. The Charmed Wife is a Cinderella retelling but it’s no HEA, instead, it reads like Cinderella is tripping balls down Alice’s rabbit hole. Thirteen and a half years go by for Cinderella after she’s married Prince Charming, thirteen and a half long years of some seriously messed up shit. She’s at a crossroads between a moral choice that will change her life when the story begins. It’s through past events and reflection that Cinderella delivers some insight on just what went wrong and why it took her so long to notice that her HEA wasn’t so happy.

I grappled at first seeing Cinderella as a middle-age version, waking up one day to find that she’s been miserable and that her fairytale ending actually ended shortly after the wedding. The reality of what came after; children being raised by a nanny goat, an inattentive negligent husband, and the inevitable aging lead to a less than desired life and a sense of emptiness. The naïve girl remained and she became a naïve woman until her eyes were opened to some of the harsher facts of life. Painful surely but leading to her actual growth as a woman. The author challenges some of the well-known secondary roles in a fascinating way; the ugly step-sisters, the fairy Godmother and of course, Prince Charming himself aren’t exactly who we’ve been led to believe they are. 

Grushin challenges every ideal in the fairytale floofiness we’re spoon fed as children. She explores the unrealistic side of relationships that are literally built on nothing but instant attraction. The author points this out beautifully when Cinderella looks back on just why she’s so unhappy. A pretty face, a glass shoe that fits and a few dances does not make for a solid relationship. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good fairytale as much as the next person but as I get older, I’m enjoying the tales where the princess saves herself much more. 

The Charmed Wife challenges a lot of widely held ideals about romantic notions and HEA in classic fairytales that are outdated and need some refreshing. I think this is a book for our times and Ms. Grushin delivers a beautifully subversive writing that challenges the old using a clever and witty narrative. 

My thanks to Shelf Awareness and Penguin Random House for gifting me a DRC for review.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

After over thirteen years of a mostly unhappy marriage, a woman seeks to murder her husband in this shrewd Me-Too era abstraction of the traditional Cinderella fairy tale. Readers who appreciate domestic realism with fantastical elements, a flawed female lead, and compelling introspective and confessional prose should give this book a look. Fans of The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter looking for an intricate and experimental tale in which the ordinary and the strange intersect, this book is for you.

The Charmed Wife begins with a disillusioned and disquieted princess, who is a nearly middle-aged mother of two trapped in a foundationless and irrevocable broken fairy tale marriage.

Olga Grushin introduces us to her version of Cinderella when she is confident her only path to serenity, possibly even joy, is the death of the man she understands to be cruel, weak, and emotionally unavailable. Then, by challenging normalized patriarchal fairy tale values, Grushin transforms a familiar callow stock character, the perfect princess delineated by her insipid simplicity, into a sympathetic protagonist with real feelings and relatable problems like postpartum depression and opioid addiction. Cinderella’s reckless and rash journey from trope to unconventional heroine is original, unexpected, and surprising.

While The Charmed Wife is often somber, it does contain some optimism later in the story when Cinderella is more forward-thinking during emotionally distressing events.

If you liked either Beyond The Woods: Fairy Tales Retold edited by Paula Guran or Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, then you might enjoy The Charmed Wife.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Charmed Wife.

The premise was intriguing so I was pleased when my request was approved.

I'm always interested in a fairytale retelling: I've read a few and none of them met my expectations so my expectations were a bit high going into The Charmed Wife.

The Charmed Wife is about an unnamed female narrator who, after 13 years of marriage and two healthy children, is no longer living her happily ever after.

Her lout of a husband can't keep his pants zipped, and her unhappiness and depression is destroying her self esteem and mental health.

She is convinced her husband has been cursed, and undertakes rigorous rituals to help break the spell and bring him back to her.

I enjoyed the whimsical and fairytale nature of the writing; the enchanted furniture, the woodland creatures, the witch and her potions, the fairy godmother, and the references to many familiar fairytales.

My biggest caveat with The Charmed Wife was the writing; don't get me wrong, the writing is good but the narrative is told in a summary-like style. There is very little dialogue and a lot of recapping and flashbacks.

I disliked the minor subplot of the mice; at first, it was cute, then it became tedious and boring after the second reading.

I enjoyed how the fairytale quickly turns to the modern world, but I was left feeling empty. I had no emotional connection or sympathy to the main character or her domestic troubles.

In many ways, if you removed the fairytale aspect and details of the book, this reads as a cliche domestic novel with an unhappy wife and an adultering, cruel man.

What an interesting look at life after a fairytale for Cinderella. I thought this was dark and poignant. I'm not sure what demographic this is actually aimed towards but I think it could be a hit if advertised well.

I’m not sure if parents are aware of the power of the stories they read and tell their children as those children are falling asleep. I’m sure most parents just want the kids to fall asleep so that they can get some sleep. But for the narrator of Olga Grushin’s devastating and clever novel, The Charmed Wife, those stories became her whole reality. But, above all, this book asks us, what happens when “happily ever after” doesn’t turn out?

A woman we come to know as Cinderella is not happy. She got everything she wanted—a handsome prince, luxurious lifestyle, and two lovely children—but her life is only perfect on the outside. No matter what Cinderella tries, nothing seems to help her recapture the glow of her early married life. Her handsome prince is has no time for her. And, the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes how distant and detached he is. Her life of luxury in their castle is lonely, boring, and unfulfilling. Her children are the only perfect thing in her life, but Cinderella needs more than motherhood.

Cinderella spills out her story in a flood of combined fairy tales. Even though Cinderella is desperately unhappy, I had a lot of fun looking for references to all sorts of tales and stories. I also love seeing Cinderella’s advisors—a witch and her fairy godmother—sparring with each other as they offer conflicting courses of action for Cinderella. The witch would be happy to help Cinderella kill Prince Roland, so long as she stops dithering. And her fairy godmother has all sorts of solutions for helping Cinderella patch over the widening cracks in her marriage and life, so long as she stops looking for problems.

What astonished me most about The Charmed Wife is the twist that Grushin pulls off in the last third of the novel. It came on so slowly that I wonder if it even qualifies as a twist, but what Grushin did completely transformed the novel into something I was not expecting. It was nothing short of brilliant. The shift brings questions from the beginning of the novel about how much we are willing to do to secure our ambitions (even if what we seek is not something that will actually make us happy) into stark relief as Cinderella (we do eventually learn her real name) is forced to make hard decisions.

The Charmed Wife is an extraordinary read. I would recommend it highly for readers who love fiction about women finding themselves after years of trying to force themselves into lives that don’t fit, as well as for readers who love seeing fairy tales put to new uses.

This book was a fairy-tale retelling of Cinderella's story. What her life was like 13 years after she married the Prince and had children and lived in the castle. I really was excited about this book - but I have to say, it was nothing what I expected and not in a good way. I thought the writing was all over the place. There was lots of fairy-tale fantasy mixed with domestic life i.e., marriage to a man who is constantly cheating on Cinderella with maids etc. It is unfortunate as I thought the premise was amazing but it just did not ring any bells for me.

I am totally conflicted about my feelings toward this story. The first part was interesting – Cinderella’s fairy tale happily ever after ending falling apart. But the middle, quite frankly was a hot mess. It felt like the author was given a writing prompt to try to include every fairy tale she’d ever heard into the story. I was tempted to stop reading and go onto the next book on my list. But because the book was given to me for the sole purpose of a review, I reluctantly kept reading.
And bam! All of a sudden we left the fairy tale world and were ensconced in modern day New York City. There were a few hints along the way – an automobile, a telephone – but they just seemed totally out of place and were not sufficient foreshadowing. The move from the fairy tale to real world was jarring and totally incoherent. It soon became obvious, however, that the first 9/10th of the story were all in the “princess’s” mind.  Then the story began to pull together, producing a satisfying ending. 
If I could, I would give this book a 2.5 rating because although it all came together in the final pages to produce a satisfying and thought-provoking end, I had to force myself to keep reading through the muddled middle. Perhaps if I read it again, knowing the outcome I might appreciate more.

Olga Grushin has written a not-so-happily-ever-after tale, picking up a few years and two children into the princess's marriage to her prince.  The fairy tale approach was a treat, less so was the switch into realism.  But her point was well made regarding our need to escape in various ways from places, relationships, and other situations we find almost unbearable.  This one should be a book club or discussion group favorite because there are so many angles from which to approach the characters and the story, even the writing itself.  Fans of classic fairy tales will enjoy Grushin's nod to the genre.  Readers looking for insight into women's issues and tenacious stereotypes will also find much to appreciate.

Olga Grushin's "The Charmed Wife" will certainly charm readers who love flipped fairy tales, which I do. I am a huge fan of Margaret Atwood's fairy tales gone awry, or fairy tales from a woman's perspective. It was very funny: I laughed a lot. The novel was also quite original; I have never read anything like it. It turned out to be a lot more psychological than, say, a Jasper Fforde Nursery Crime novel, which is pure humor from beginning to end.

The book begins with a standard Cinderella story, only "Cinderella" (we don't know her name and she is a first-person narrator) is in her mid-30s, has two kids, and is completely over her Happily Ever After. Her prince is driving her crazy, as is her palace, with singing maids, chandeliers that clink all by themselves, talking teapots, that whole Disneyesque scene.. She sneaks out of the palace in the dead of night and looks for a witch to curse Prince Charming, whose name is Roland. The witch wants to know the whole backstory, so "Cinderella" reveals all, little by little.

There is a parallel story line about "Cinderella's" pet mice, Nibbles and Brie, which begins as a wonderful parody but began to bore me pretty early on in the book.

When "Cinderella" begins to question everything about her marriage, Grushkin first has her main character take various extreme fairy-tale measures to lift the curse (there isn't a curse) such as going on long weird quests (this was quite funny) and making shirts out of nettles. All of this happens in the flashback accounts. 

After the witch agrees to help, the Cinderella storyline comes full circle and other fairy tale story lines get woven into the narrative, and finally, all the fairy tale stuff falls away and reality begins to encroach, little by little.

This is a genius plot device, dropping the fairy tale elements of a novel until the reader lands in a straight historical fiction tale in a real place when the narrator wakes up from her fairytale dream. The story behind the story is all too familiar to real women everywhere. It was a fun read, but I was lost and unsettled for too many pages.. I needed more explanations during about the last fourth of the novel.

I received an advanced readers copy of this book from the publisher and Netgalley and was encouraged to submit an honest review.